Re: RFC 2534 list of ua-media and paper-size values

Larry Masinter:
>
[....]
>Anyway, I think we might want to take another look at the list
>of media values and update it, possibly providing for some other
>mechanism for registering new values.

In principle, the media feature tag framework is powerful enough to
allow for the co-existence of both the RFC 2534 ua-media vocabulary and
the HTML 4.0 vocabulary alongside each other.

In this particular case, however, I agree that merging them is an
appropriate way to go currently, as there are no deployed uses of the
ua-media tag (I know of) yet.

Transforming the ua-media value set into an open-ended set, to which
new values can be added at will in future even after some deployment,
is a much bigger step, and one that I would not want to take.  There
is a definite advantage to application and content authors in having a
small, stable set of values with a guarantee that, for example, a
value like 'screen' will not be superceded by 3 alternative other
values in future.

New kinds of distinctions, inside already registered ua-media
designations, are better handled by the introduction of completely new
tags.


>Larry

Koen.